Robert Doak

Just tried the Cobalt Violet from Blue Ridge Artist Materials. It’s nice. It has a high pigment load. On their website they say that their paint maker—Eric Silver—learned paint-making from Robert Doak. His paint handles similarly to his—not at all stiff, but rather smooth and creamy.

Like Doak, they grind their paint in a linseed/walnut blend in (they say) small batches. The prices are pretty reasonable and they have a nice (if not extremely broad) range of single-pigment paints. They have some interesting historical colors such as genuine vermilion, rose madder, and lead tin yellow. They also offer a copal medium and a copal retouch varnish.

If you are a reader and you have experience with these guys and their products, I’d be obliged if you’d share it in comments.

Also of interest

• Doak’s cristallo medium (5)
• Where to find medium supplies (7)
• Update on Robert Doak (1)
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In the comments to this post, Jeff writes:

What would you recommend as a good source for purchasing canada balsam / stand oil / spike?

First let me note that these are natural materials. Any supplier can get a bad batch. That I got quality stuff five years ago does not guarantee that you will get high quality materials from the same company now. That’s the nature of the market.

That being said, if you want to get Canada balsam, spike, and stand oil, these are suppliers I’d recommend taking a look at:

• Studio Products. I’ve purchased all three of these ingredients from these guys and the quality has been excellent.
• Sinopia. Great pigments and other supplies. They are now the sole distributor for the European art supply company Kremer.
• Natural Pigments. They sell some stuff made by Studio Products and many other art supplies, including a line of oil paints made with some very old-school pigments. They also sell heat-bodied oil in various viscosities. Stand oil is one grade of heat-bodied oil. That would allow you to experiment, if you liked.
• Kama Pigments. They have Canada balsam (at a very good price) as well as oil of spike (which they call lavender oil). I have never ordered from them, but have heard good things from others, despite the truly awful design of their web site.
• Robert Doak and Associates. They have various pre-made mediums, as well as balsam, spike, and stand oil. Don’t let Robert tell you what you have to buy from him.

Note that you should not have to buy a lot of medium supplies, because you should not add much medium to your paint. Unless you are making a lot of paintings, which would be excellent.

Please share any experiences you might have with these suppliers or other places to get these materials.

Also of interest

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• Oil painting medium (0)
• Doak’s cristallo medium (5)
• Update on Robert Doak (1)
• Robert Doak (0)

So I called up Robert Doak over the Summer to order some paint. As he does, he asked me about how I paint and started suggesting additional things for me to buy (he’s a very good salesman). One of the things he pushed was his new medium, “cristallo.” At $12 USD for a 40 ml tube I decided to splurge and pick some up.

Mr. Doak says that the primary ingredients in cristallo are leaded glass powder and sun-thickened walnut oil. It also contains small amounts of cold-pressed walnut oil, beeswax, and lead drier. It is based on recent research indicating that 16th century Venetian painters added more powdered glass to their paint than was previously thought, although he makes no claim that this is the “rediscovered” medium of Titian, Giorgione, and Tintoretto. He suggests that it is best used by spreading it thinly onto the surface and painting into it. He also suggests that it is a good replacement for varnish on a dried painting, but I am dubious about that application and have not tried it.

I’ve now painted with it, off and on, for a few months. It is a sort of thick, colorless fluid, about the consistency of ketchup. It is not sticky the way mediums containing resins, balsams, or stand oil tend to be. It is easy to spread very thinly onto the painting surface with a finger (you can feel a slight granularity from the glass powder, but it is barely perceptible) and it becomes more fluid as you move it around (i.e., it is somewhat thixotropic). It is nice to paint on, providing a pleasant, slippery quality to the painting surface. Mixed into paint, it dilutes it slightly and gives it extra brushability. It doesn’t hold brush marks. It does not seem to markedly increase or decrease the drying time of oil paint. So far, I like it. It does not make the paint magically transparent or luminous, but I didn’t expect it to.

If you do use cristallo or any other painting medium, add only very small amounts to your paint—never more than 20% of paint volume and preferably much less than that.

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I wrote about Robert Doak’s oil paints back in July, when I first started this web log. Today, he called me. He had noticed my post here, looked up my phone number on his customer list, and wanted to thank me for recommending his products. He also asked about my statement that some of his paints separate, so that a oil oozes out of the tube when you remove the cap (I’ve only had this happen with a small percentage of his paint tubes).

He said that he almost never gets this complaint. He wanted me to know that, when it happens, it does so because he uses very little stearate, which is a clear, inexpensive pigment that paint manufacturers use to prevent separation. It also reduces pigment load and (when used in excess) makes paints more thick and difficult to work with. Cheaper brands of oil paint use a lot of stearate, to improve shelf life and reduce the percentage of expensive pigments in their paint (that’s part of why student grade paint is usually very stiff). I have never been concerned about separation with Doak’s paint, because I know it happens because he emphasizes pigment load and smooth handling over shelf life.

In the original post I said that the way to deal with separation was to squeeze your paint out onto absorbent paper, wait a couple of minutes, then transfer the paint to your palette with a knife. Mr. Doak said doing that over and over might tend to leech the oil out of the paint tube and cause the paint in the tube to harden (I haven’t had that happen). He recommended instead storing any tube of paint with separation issues cap downward, so the oil moves back up through the pigment in the tube. I told him I’d try that and pass on the tip.

I still strongly recommend his paint.

Also of interest

• Robert Doak (0)
• Doak’s cristallo medium (5)
• Where to find medium supplies (7)
• Oil painting without solvents (32)
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runs an art materials store in Brooklyn, NY. He is an interesting old guy with very strong opinions about how paintings should be made. If you are an artist, his shop is full of needful things. If you call him or walk into his store, you won’t be able to escape having a very long conversation about art, in which he tries to figure out what kind of painter you are so that he can recommend what you should buy from him. He is something to experience, although you should by no means treat all of his opinions as gospel.

He makes oil paint. It is, unlike any other brand that I am aware of, ground in a blend of linseed and walnut oil. The paint is really good stuff, highly pigmented and very fluid. No one makes better blues than Robert Doak. It is amazingly inexpensive for top of the line paint. The paints are made to maximize quality rather than shelf life, so they often separate in the tube. That’s OK; just squeeze the paint out onto absorbent paper, wait a minute or so for the extra oil to settle out, and transfer to your palette with a knife. It’s worth the trouble.

Robert has no web site; he only recently began accepting credit cards (before that, mail order was done by check, and if he’d done business with you before, he’d mail out your order on the strength of your promise). Robert Doak & Associates, Inc., can be reached at 89 Bridge St., Brooklyn, NY 11201, or by phone at (718) 237-1210. Call before stopping in, as he’s not there every day. If you are a painter in oil, watercolor, tempera, pastel, or any other traditional medium, you owe it to yourself to get in touch with him. When he goes, there won’t be any more.

Updated information on Robert Doak’s paint here.

Also of interest

• Update on Robert Doak (1)
• Doak’s cristallo medium (5)
• Where to find medium supplies (7)
• Oil painting without solvents (32)
• Studio Products (0)